The United States has returned 657 antiquities, together valued at nearly $14 million, to India, while officials said significant work remains to recover and repatriate other looted cultural property.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the handover at an event attended by Consul Rajlakshmi Kadam of the Consulate General of India in New York. The items were recovered through long-running investigations into trafficking networks, including probes tied to disgraced art dealer Subhash Kapoor and convicted trafficker Nancy Wiener. Bragg stressed the large scale of the networks that targeted India’s heritage and said his office would continue efforts to recover stolen artifacts.
Consul General Binaya Pradhan thanked the Manhattan DA’s Office, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and law enforcement partners for their vigilance in locating and returning culturally significant objects.
Among the pieces returned was a bronze figure of Avalokiteshvara, valued at about $2 million. The statue sits on an inscribed double-lotus base over a throne flanked by lions; the inscription names the artisan as Dronaditya of Sipur, near modern-day Raipur in Chhattisgarh. The bronze was part of a large hoard discovered near the Lakshmana Temple in 1939 and was recorded at the Mahant Ghasidas Memorial Museum, Raipur, by 1952. It was stolen from the museum, smuggled out of India by 1982, entered a private New York collection by 2014, and was seized by the Manhattan DA’s office in 2025.
Also returned was a red sandstone Buddha, standing with his right hand raised in abhaya mudra (a gesture of protection). The statue—valued at about $7.5 million—bore damage consistent with temple looting in northern India: its feet were broken below the knees and only fragments of the halo remained. Investigators say the Buddha was smuggled into New York by Subhash Kapoor and recovered from one of his storage units by the DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU).
A sandstone figure of a dancing Ganesha was among the other notable objects. Prosecutors say it was looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh in 2000 by an associate of Kapoor, Ranjeet Kanwar. Convicted trafficker Vaman Ghiya allegedly sold and shipped the statue to New York gallery owner Doris Wiener. After Doris Wiener’s death, her daughter Nancy Wiener—who was later convicted of antiquities trafficking—allegedly fabricated provenance for the Ganesha and consigned it to Christie’s New York, where it sold at auction in 2012. The private buyer surrendered the statue to the Manhattan DA’s office earlier this year.
For more than a decade the DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, working with Homeland Security Investigations and other partners, has pursued Kapoor and co-conspirators for alleged illegal looting, exportation, and sale of artifacts from South and Southeast Asia. An arrest warrant for Kapoor was issued in 2012; in November 2019 he and seven co-defendants were indicted in Manhattan for conspiracy to traffic stolen antiquities. Kapoor was convicted in India in 2022 for trafficking-related crimes, and his extradition to the United States remains pending. Five of his co-defendants have been convicted by the Manhattan DA’s office.
To date, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit says it has recovered more than 6,200 cultural treasures—including rare books, works of art, and antiquities—valued at over $485 million, and has returned more than 5,900 items to 36 countries. The ATU has secured convictions against 18 individuals for cultural-property crimes, with another seven alleged traffickers awaiting extradition.
Officials described the repatriation of these 657 objects as an important step in restoring India’s cultural patrimony, while reiterating that investigations and recovery efforts will continue as authorities pursue additional traffickers and stolen items.
